VCard & Generic Fields

[Groover David]

I still have trouble with the Vcard wizard. I just replaced my  
Blackberry and until now, I was OK with not implementing the whole  
confusing Vcard setup "generic field is not set" .. thing.

I am reading the manual as Jim posted in this old message reply. But  
here is the problem, in my generic field set up wizard, it shows the  
first (left) column and has a header labeling that column as a  
database field. In Jims manual it shows this column as populated by  
database fields.

Wouldn't you know it, mine is different. Just my luck I guess but,  
there it is. The database fields are the generic fields, and the  
generic fields are the database fields. As I understand it, I have to  
chose some main "generic fields in my database to associate with the  
fields that would export to, in this case Apples address book, and do  
it correctly.

But as it seems I have been able to do that, and I Try to export a  
test record, it goes to a save dialog, then it says there is an error  
in the procedure and it cannot complete. And indeed no vcard file is  
saved out to disk. Perhaps this is because my wizard is already arse  
backwards, or perhaps I have skipped a step? Bottom line, it isn't  
working.

I have asked this before but, does anyone know of a way to sync a Pan  
db directly with a  blackberry? The PocketMac SyncManager will sync a  
few mac apps with the blackberry including the Apple address book. It  
still seems I am taking too many steps. Although, it seems I am  
stumbling just on the export wizard. Maybe I should stop messing   
with the wizards and save the correct fields to a text file and see  
if I can get address book to pick them up?

Has anyone any sage wisdom here?

Thanks if you do.

David Groover

On Feb 5, 2008, at 10:40 AM, James Rea wrote:

>> And a very important question I still have is, what does the term
>> "generic field" actually refer to?
>
> The Generic Fields wizard allows you to designate that certain  
> fields in
> your database contain standard contact and address information  
> (this may
> be expanded to other types of standard generic data in the future, for
> example calendar information).
>
> For example, suppose your database contains contact information, and
> you'd like to be able to use this info to make and receive vcards,
> display maps, automatically import from the white pages wizard,  
> dial the
> phone, etc. You simply designate which fields contain what  
> information.
> Panorama then remembers which fields have these designations, and
> various operations use these designations to interact with your
> databases. You don't have to use special field names (for example your
> City field doesn't have to be named "City", etc.) and you have some
> flexibility in field structure (is the name store in one field or two,
> how are phone #'s stored, etc.) This makes the system adaptable to  
> your
> exisiting databases, instead of forcing you to modifying the structure
> and coding of your Panorama databases to conform to these new
> capabilities.
>
> For more detail please see page 236-249 of the Panorama 5.5 Handbook.
> (BTW, Elon's suggestions for improving the documentation in this area
> are quite constructive and have been noted for future revisions.)
>
> Jim Rea
> President, ProVUE Development